Battleland

Better Late Than Never

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Interesting Pentagon contract buried deep in the long list it announced Friday. The Army awarded nearly $15 million to Jorge Scientific of Arlington, Va., to “provide for the modification of an existing contract to research and develop a methodology for counter insurgency operations. Work will be performed in Arlington and Afghanistan…”

To develop a methodology for COIN ops in Afghanistan? Heck, we arrived on Oct. 7, 2001, and we still don’t have a counter-insurgency plan? Not only that — we’ve got to hire outsiders to do it? Even as we’re planning to pull all our combat troops out by the end of 2014?

Turns out this is at least the third contract along these lines Jorge has received since November, totaling $77 million.

Last Nov. 9, the Army awarded Jorge a $21,100,003 cost-plus-fixed-fee contract “to design new doctrine and training to answer the gaps in current operations as indentified by [Afghanistan’s] Regional Command East. Work will be performed in Afghanistan, with an estimated completion date of June 20, 2013. There were 999 bids solicited, with 999 bids received.” Let’s hope the Army was more accurate with its count of the money than its count of those soliciting and bidding on this contract.

Anyway, such competition apparently evaporated like the morning dew in the next two contracts, both of which involved only a single solicitation, and a single bidder: Jorge.

— On May 29, the Army awarded Jorge a $41,404,552 contract “in support of new doctrine and training methodologies.”

— And then there was Friday’s $14,997,551 award for more Afghan COIN work.

A quick check on Jorge shows it to be one of a growing number of Pentagon-centric firms ready to help win wars and bust budgets. It boasts “a compound annual growth rate of 53% over five years,” according to its website. There’s also a litany of the Pentagon’s favorite buzzwords on its “About Jorge” webpage, where its teams are elite, its specialists agile, its capabilities unprecedented, its tailoring unique, its solutions end-to-end, its experience frontline and its tactics adaptive. It goes without saying that the problems facing Jorge’s clients are critical and their challenges vital.

It concludes:

We turn requirements into results and make missions possible.

Wonder if that means we get our $77 million back if Afghanistan goes south?